Brian Williams

Heidi Montag reportedly bailed on the White House Correspondents gala when MSNBC wouldn't adhere to the demands of her manager and boyfriend Spencer Pratt for first class tickets for the pair, even though only Ms. Montag was invited. [P6]

Padma Lakshmi is apparently cozying up with IMG owner Teddy Forstmann since her divorce from Salman Rushdie. [P6]  read more »

Brian Williams and Tim Russert came to tonight’s debate prepared to moderate—or perhaps to instigate—an argument over the role of race in the Democratic presidential campaign and the matter of who first introduced the subject.

But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanted none of it. And neither did an unknown member of the audience in Las Vegas, who interrupted the proceedings about 20 minutes in with loud castigations of the moderators and their “race-based” questions.

Williams and Russert devoted the first segment of the debate to various facets of the race question, which has dominated news coverage of the Democratic contest for the past few days, and they were anxious to force both leading candidates to address the way the subject has been used by their own campaigns.  read more »

Jasmine Moy, a young lawyer with a habit of volunteering on campaigns in her spare time, bumped into some NBC cameramen during primary season in Manchester, New Hampshire.

She found out what happens when you claim to be a fan of the network’s star anchor, Brian Williams.

He finds you.

Moy sent over this transcription of the voicemail she says she received from Williams:  read more »

On Tuesday Jan. 15, MSNBC will host a debate among Democratic presidential candidates live from Las Vegas.

According to today's announcement from MSNBC, the debate will focus on "issues important to minority voters" and will be sponsored a number of groups, including the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 100 Black Men of America, and the Democratic African-American Leadership Council.

Brian Williams and Tim Russert will moderate.  read more »

The Politico's Michael Calderone (formerly of Media Mob fame) recently caught up with a bunch of broadcast news bigwigs in Iowa.

Along the way, NBC's Brian Williams talked up his belief in the advantage for NBC of having a sibling cable news outlet providing plenty of real estate for its anchors and correspondents to appear throughout the day.

"Williams noted that NBCs advantage for 2008 is having a cable news network, MSNBC, working round the clock — 'a game-changer,' in his words," reported Mr. Calderone.  read more »

Over the last few weeks, we've learned from several reports that NBC is planning a series of layoffs at NBC News and MSNBC. Today, TV Newser provides some names.

According to the site, Davidson Goldin, MSNBC's editorial director; Amy Rosenblum, the senior producer of the 10am hour of The Today Show; Joe Alicastro, a veteran NBC News producer; and Jean Harper, a senior prodcuer at Nightly News who has worked with Brian Williams for many years are all on the way out.

Mr. Goldin's likely departure was first reported last week by The New York Post.

Mr. Russert has found a safe way to be a bully and to embarrass those who do not have the protection afforded by the role of journalist.  read more »

The Huffington Post notes that NBC Nightly News had almost a million more viewers last week than the week before, putting it back on top in the ratings--and attributes the bump, plausibly, to anchor Brian Williams' much-hyped November 3 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

The obvious lesson the networks will draw is that the best way to promote their news anchors to a younger audience is by putting them on shows that young people actually watch. In other words, brace for Charlie Gibson on Dancing with the Stars.

In case you missed it, here's a clip of Rudy Giuliani’s recent interview with Brian Williams.

When asked about his personal feelings about Hillary Clinton, Giuliani said he knew her well. In fact, he said, “I got to know her actually, probably the best, during September 11.”

Somewhere, Joe Biden was smiling.

Coming out of the train on the way to City Hall this morning, I spotted two guys on a bench behind the building, chatting away casually.

The guys, it turns out, were Michael Bloomberg and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. With the mayor's green initiatives, it's no surprise he's getting national attention.

But it's unclear if any of it will actually help with getting his congestion pricing plan approved in Albany. As long as a certain stunningly opaque official can single-handedly stop it, the national news appearances amount to a nice bit of personal publicity but little else.

“I’ve met an estimated 56 of 100,” said NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, surveying the crowd at last night’s Time 100 gala. “I always assumed I might come as a guest but not a lapel-wearing member.”

Oh, Mr. Williams, don't be so modest! Or quite so serious, either: he said he was most looking forward to meeting Elie Wiesel, author of Night.

When guests include the likes of Cate Blanchett, Martha Stewart, Michael J. Fox, Harvey Weinstein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Tina Fey, and Stephen Schwarzman, that almost seems like taking things a bit seriously.

But Elie Wiesel was there, just like the others, to be honored at Time’s third annual party for the magazine’s hand-picked influencers. It was held, as these things are nowadays with an almost monotonous regularity, at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  read more »

Last week, after 39-year-old Jeff Zucker was crowned president of the newly merged NBC Universal Tel  read more »

Brian Williams stood up for Jimmy Carter Monday by airing a wonderful scene from the Carter Center over the weekend. At some panel convened by Williams, Carter volunteered a scene at Camp David with Anwar Sadat that is apparently not in his book. Sadat was leaving. Carter changed into a suit and tie, knelt in his room and prayed to God for guidance, then went into Sadat's room and, surrounded by suitcases, asked Sadat's aides to leave him alone with Anwar. Carter addressed Sadat angrily, nose to nose. "You're betraying me and you're betraying your people," he said. If you leave, Carter went on, "I will sever our friendship." Sadat, of course, stayed, and the rest is history.

As Carter told this story, he started to cry. I wonder about his survival guilt. Sadat may have preserved his friendship with Carter, but three years later he was assassinated. The episode suggests to me (again) the spiritual motivation for Carter's valiant book. If he's sacrificing himself, well, he owes as much to his friend.

NBC Nightly News last night offered three separate soundbites of Tom Brokaw, first in its opening coverage of the Ford funeral, then in an interview by Brian Williams, then in a special section of excerpts of eulogies. The royal placement, which gave even Henry Kissinger lower billing, continues the NBC pattern, of wheeling Brokaw in to hold forth (usually predictably) on major events, and would seem to reflect Brokaw's reluctance to let go and Brian Williams' filial feelings; his manner when Brokaw appears is somewhat servile. I wonder what the servility masks, but no matter, it's a misuse of precious airtime.

“Touch my Peabody,” Brian Williams said.    read more »

“Touch my Peabody,” Brian Williams said.  read more »

We're peeling ourselves off the sticky floor over here to head off for a week of vacation. Don't be sad! Today's double issue is crammed full of enough stuff to keep you occupied on the crapper for the next two weeks.

First-year banking boys enjoyed their coke-snorting, hot-dog-eating summers just fine; L.A. sucks and Lindsay Lohan will go for a sister's neck; The Martignetti brothers, of the LES's Martignetti Liquors, are opening a restaurant; there are young policy wonk intellects!; and Dustin Hoffman is a playa.

There's the closing of the Stonewall bar (attracting "wrong," "urban" element say (cough! white!) neighbors. Who are those Anthropologie-shopping gals? Brian Williams, the last old man of TV news, wants you to touch his Peabody.The vaunted Trend Piece may be as dead as a dodo. Hey, we sneaked a Black Panther onto the front page! In movies, there's Half Nelson and Leopold's Ghost and 13 and Snakes and Idlewild. Simon Doonan recaps his homosexualist summer; Tortoise still post-rocks; Neil Sedaka sold off part of his apartment and Elizabeth Lindemann bought a $10-mil bachelorette pad, and there's a scheme for an idealist fantasy of New York. And what a heap of Iraq books!

There's Tennis! And tennis! And tennis! And tennis! And tennis! Do you like tennis?

There's our extremely self-referential comic strip. There's Christine Quinn and Malachy McCourt and the DNC and reports from Jerusalem and Beirut.

Don't ever forget there's someone for everyone. And two more words: Yacht Rock.

Ten days ago I praised Richard Engel's beautiful and amazing story on NBC Nightly News about a Baghdad orphanage for girls whose parents had died because of the war we started. I was hardly alone. Last night Brian Williams said that the network had been overwhelmed by emails and calls about the story. The network then did something great: it reaired the story.

You will see that it has top billing on the NBC website. Here the headline is "How to Help Iraq's Orphans." NBC then suggests that viewers give money to Unicef, No More Victims, and two other nonprofit groups.

I don't think that's enough. By twice doing this story, for the edification and diversion of Americans in their kitchens, NBC has established a special connection that it should honor—a connection not to a generic group of Iraq orphans, but to these 56 girls. On last night's report, Engel said that masked men had lately come to the door of the orphanage. He showed the girls cowering in a back room. Will these girls now be a special focus of terrorism? The thought is almost too horrible to consider, but it should be on NBC's mind. What threat has this tearjerker exposed these girls to? What threat does life in Baghdad—a life far outside NBC's bunkered bureau and flakjackets—expose them to?

Last night, Williams said that adoption by Americans was impossible. But there is an obvious answer. These girls should be evacuated. NBC should take steps to achieve that, even if that means getting them into the NBC bunker. My best guess is that evacuation means Syria, where in January I saw some of the hundreds of thousands of former neighbors who were now living peaceful lives. And my wife's cousin, who teaches in Damascus, told of teaching Iraqi refugees, some the victims of kidnaping.

Tonight the NBC Nightly News doggedly began its broadcast with a report from the levees of New Orleans at the onset of hurricane season rather than where CBS and ABC began: with the Haditha massacre and the European-U.S. coalition visavis Iran.

By such choices, Brian Williams is hewing to the position he took at a forum of the news media in Harlem some weeks back (on C-Span), when he asserted that NBC was committed to covering the problems of black people—witness the New Orleans coverage. (An angry questioner had actually asked about Mumia Abu-Jamal; all the network types dodged that one, understandably). Good for them, and yet tonight's broadcast showed just how stupid such a stubborn posture can be, in the event. The important news was elsewhere; NBC couldn't go there, out of some kind of ideological bias.

“It’s better than having an Applebee’s in the lobby,” said Brian Williams, t  read more »

We're pathetic. Brian Williams is in Africa for NBC Nightly News to report on the AIDS crisis and the focus of his piece is Bono of U2, his visit. What a great man he is, what an investment he's made in Africa. Act I. Bono in his black shirt and rockstar spectacles, thumbwrestling with an African child. Act II. Williams and British Treasury Minister Gordon Brown—whom Williams touts as the likely successor to Tony Blair—are standing around being lectured by the pierced and piercing Bono on the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism for starving Africans. Act III. Bono's black shirt now sweated through, he collapses on the plane, with just, Williams informs, three hours sleep.

This isn't about Bono. He's a good guy. More power to him. It's about Americans. Can we care about anything without a celebrity attached? Global Warming, brought to you by Al Gore. Literature, sponsored by Oprah. African Hunger, presented by Bono. And now George Clooney brings us—genocide.

George Bush didn't look comfortable at his press conference today. He kept getting a nervous smile, he kept making awkward jokes. Like, he told the ballsy David Gregory of NBC that he wouldn't offer him a job at the White House, "you wouldn't pass the background check!" Then when he realized it was inappropriate—no one laughed—Bush said "That was a cheap shot" and promptly withdrew the crack. Right after that he threw his arms in the air as he joked about a reporter's "brilliant" question. More nervousness. The reporters at the press conference seemed nervous themselves. Like they were pulling punches, afraid to make him seem even more foolish. Last night with Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News, Bush was also awkward. Looking away, never firm, his voice a little quavery and squeaky. Williams was over-polite, as if afraid the guy might crack right there.

The President seems to be losing the one good quality he once had, emotional comfort, manliness. The understanding so many others have had, that he's in over his head, has dawned at last on him. He's like a pitcher who's got the bases loaded and has lost the plate, also his fastball, his curveball and his offspeed pitch. Who's going to pull him? Just remember, when you do—pull Cheney too.

After Peter Jennings's death I made the Pepsi switch to NBC because Brian Williams seems real and knows how to turn a phrase. Tonight, though, he lost me with a report on a movie about Flight 93, a movie in which NBC has a financial interest.

What a manipulative piece of pap. The report began with people expressing shock and dismay at the graphic trailer for the film. Then it moved to survivors of the victims of Flight 93, to claim that they were being healed by the film. Dawn Fratangelo signed off—

a reality too grim for some moviegoers, but too important for loved ones left behind.

In short: another ad, disguised as reporting. Brian, baby, be real.

For $30.5 million, one wealthy buyer can look down on the endless list of celebrities who have already purchased condos at One Beacon Court. The 8,000-square-foot, full-floor spread on the 55th Floor is now on the market.

Currently the ritzy building's most expensive apartment was sold to record mogul Alan Meltzer for $27 million. The growing list of the notable names includes Beyonce, Brian Williams, former G.E chief executive Jack Welch, and recently, current G.E. chief Jeffrey Immelt.  read more »

-Michael Calderone

Like usual, I been a-eyein’ them newspapers and them TV news programs, and I’m a-here to  read more »